Witnessing the Media’s Seismic Change
DH | Jun 16, 2009 | Comments 4
Just to get an idea of how important Twitter has become as a news source during the current election crisis in Iran, the United States State Department asked executives of Twitter to postpone maintenance that was scheduled for the site. The reason is that Twitter is the world’s primary news source about the situation in Iran … not CNN or BBC or anyone else.
Unfortunately, Twitter’s Internet hosting service – NTT America – had no choice but to shut down for an hour Tuesday afternoon for important updates or risk that the whole Twitter network might crash.
Twitter citizen journalist channels – such as #iranelection – are carrying hundreds of messages a second. It is an avalanche of personal eyewitness reports, rumors and updates.
Twitter had attempted to have the maintenance on its servers yesterday but delayed after pleas from around the world. Today, the request came from the U.S. government to keep it open.
CNN, meantime, is crumbling before our eyes, replaying the same video and superficial news, over and over. CNN has made itself old-media by falling back into its trap of relying on star reporters – CNN’s Christiane Amanpour has been in Tehran but in her characteristic style, it is more about self-promotion of Amanpour than getting the story. Consequently, no depth of reporting but rather promotion after promotion of Amanpour on the scene giving a free pass during interviews with the bad guys and dictators. In today’s Twitter world, that no longer works. Come to think of it, her self-promotional style never did ring with credibility.
Twitter is now established as the world’s leading news channel, not CNN. CNN has fallen on its own pricey, celebrity sword.
Filed Under: Featured • News Media
It’s ironic that CNN trys so hard to be on the ball re social media – constantly promoting their own Twitter page and viewer generated content and feedback – but is getting owned by the very tools it is trying to embrace.
It is a good case study in the futility of adopting social media tools just for the sake of it and in the importance of authenticity.
It a sad commentary that those, such as CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, have obviously forgotten that it is the story, the truth of something, and not the reporter that is what matters. You are, as our English friends would say, spot on in your analysis of the current situation in Iran that Twitter, and those that care about the truth, are the ones keeping us informed and not CNN or the BBC.
The annoying practice of short video loops to accompany stories has bothered me for some time. There may indeed be a lack of good footage, but in this day and age, there appears to be a greater lack of creativity among the news channels. This could be another step toward disproving the famed George Costanza dictum–just because it’s on TV doesn’t mean people will watch it.
As a business person I wonder how Twitter’s fortunes will change after this? It’s privately-held & venture-backed. Until the Iranian elections most speculated that Google would buy it for its ability to do real-time searches.
It’s like watching a piano prodigy mature into a mathematician.